1:72 Spitfire Mk.Vb wheel bay FOAM flexibel mask for Tamiya

The Mk.V that carried the weight of 1941 and 1942

The Spitfire Mk.V was the most numerous variant of the whole family. It came about as a quick answer to the need to put the more powerful Merlin engine into an already established airframe, and in this guise the British fighter served through the hardest period of the war. The letter b after the mark designates the armament layout with two twenty-millimeter cannons and four machine guns, whose barrels protruded from the leading edge. It was the Mk.V that fought over Malta, escorted raids over occupied France and was the first to meet the feared Focke-Wulf, whose performance it long could not match.

Building a model like this includes work nobody talks about: covering the openings under the wing so that no paint stays in them. This soft foam molding is pushed into the space, expands and holds by itself. When the paint is done you pull it out and the bay stays as you painted it, or cleanly gray from the primer coat.

How to handle it

It goes into the finished, degreased bay before the first coat. Pull it out carefully so that the edge of the paint does not lift; a slight twist with tweezers helps. The set is cut to the Tamiya plastic and contains no part of the model.

A model of this version tends to be the first British fighter a builder buys, and that is exactly why it is worth practicing proper masking on it. The difference between a sharp color boundary and a bay clouded with mist from the airbrush shows even without a magnifier. If the insert is put aside after it is taken out, it will serve again on the next example from the same mold.